This invention relates broadly to modular blocks and to assemblies employing same; it is particularly useful in enabling the easy customized fabrication of electrical interface boards of the type in which electrical connectors are mounted on the board to enable easy interconnection between electrical elements. Such a customized interface board may, for example, be mounted on the firewall under the hood of an automotive truck; in a typical case, wires or cables, terminated in appropriate connectors, lead to the rear side of the board, the connectors being mounted within corresponding openings inside the various modular blocks. The front of the board will typically have plugged into it various electrical components, for example flashers, relays, or connectors on the ends of other wires, the terminals of these electrical elements typically being plugged into suitable standard openings provided on the front face of the interface board.
Such general types of arrangement being well known, it will not be necessary to describe in detail their typical constructions and uses. Suffice it for the present purpose to point out that the optimum configurations of such boards differ substantially from each other depending on the particular application, for instance with respect to the height and width of the board, the position and nature of its mounting arrangements, the number of connections to be made to it, etc.
Accordingly, for many purposes it is desirable to provide suitable modular blocks and structures which can readily be combined with each other in side-by-side arrangements so as to produce the size, shape and complexity of interface board which is best for any particular application. This makes it possible to utilize mass production techniques to make large quantities of a relatively small number of types of modular blocks and associated structures, with the usual economies of mass production, and then assemble them as desired into customized interface boards suitable for each particular application.
It is also desirable that such modular blocks and structures be inexpensive to make and easy to assemble to each other, without requiring complicated mounting procedures or mounting devices, and in fact it is desirable to be able to assemble such a customized board of strong reliable construction using simple manual assembly steps and without requiring any special tools.
It is therefore an object of the invention to provide a new and useful modular block suitable for use in an electrical interface board, and to provide assemblies of such modular blocks with other modular blocks or structures to produce desired forms of customized interface boards.
Another object is to provide such modular blocks, structures and interface boards which are inexpensive to manufacture, easy to assemble, yet capable of a large variety of customized configurations.
A further object is to provide a new and useful locking system for enabling the easy manual assembly of such blocks to other blocks or structures.